American Foreign Policy in Southeast Asia – Key Information and Trends: 1973-2017

December 31, 2017

This final Presidential Briefing Paper provides a summary of the American influence in Vietnam from 1963 through 1973 and serves to illustrate lessons learned by all participants in this conflict though the present date. First and foremost, an appraisal of the cost of the conflict in terms of human lives lost – combatant and non-combatant alike – is in order to establish the overall scale of the Vietnam War. Approximately 8,744,000 Americans served in Vietnam during the war, with over 58,220 killed in action – of these fatalities, 47,434 were the result of direct combat action.[1] For the North Vietnamese military forces and civilians involved in the conflict, the exact numbers vary due to the problematic record-keeping in Hanoi, however, the estimates of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) fatalities are estimated to be between 440,000 and 1.1 million, while civilian casualties range from 195,000 to 2 million.[2] These numbers alone, given the overall futility of the Vietnam War, are relevant to the overall diplomatic and societal issues which surrounded the war for all nations involved.

The power vacuum and resultant regional instability posed severe issues for not only Vietnam, but the nations surrounding the conflicted nation. Following the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the peace agreement of 1973, South Vietnamese leadership attempted to capitalize on the cease-fire terms by resettling displaced persons into disputed border regions and aggressively attacking North Vietnamese logistic lines; in the process, South Vietnamese forces sustained casualty rates higher than they had endured during the entirety of the war.[3] With American financial aid intentionally limited due to the concerns of such actions prolonging the war, the South Vietnamese forces began a slow collapse due to desertions and poor morale which ultimately resulted in the capture of Saigon by National Liberation Front troops on April 30, 1975 and the effective dissolution of South Vietnam as an independent nation.[4] In neighboring Cambodia, the rise of the Pol Pot regime followed the end of American regional military presence and the subsequent genocide by the regime resulted in the deaths of over 400,000 Cambodians and subsequent invasion in 1978 by Vietnamese forces in order to contain and eliminate the influence of the brutality of Pol Pot. The intervention of China and its invasion of Vietnam, along with the three decades of conflict prompted the massive exodus of 1.5 million refugees from Southeast Asia, with many of them seeking asylum in the U.S.[5]

Since the end of the Vietnam War, relations between the U.S. and Vietnam continued to be tainted by the painful memories each nation endured from the war. Economically crippled by the war and the inability of communism to provide more than a 2 percent growth rate of Vietnam’s economy, Hanoi struggled in the decades following the unification of the nation and further strained relations with Communist China by conceding to U.N pressure to hold elections and withdraw forces from Cambodia in 1991.[6] For the U.S., the financial toll of the war proved to be substantial and dictated subsequent foreign policy and military efforts. With an estimated cost of $167 billion, the war initiated economic inflation of the U.S. dollar which strained American contributions to the global economy. Concurrent with the financial costs, the political conflicts of the Vietnam War irrevocably damaged the domestic and international faith in American diplomatic and military efforts.[7] By 1994, however, the relations between Vietnam and the U.S. had begun the path towards reconciliation, with the re-establishment of the U.S. embassy in Ho Chi Minh City – formerly, Saigon – and the end of U.S. economic embargoes imposed upon Vietnam at the end of the war in 1973.[8]

An analysis of the overall conflict in Vietnam, much like every major conflict in human history, reflects the overall resiliency of mankind in moving beyond the hostility of warfare. With no defining initial event marking the official start of the war, the conflict in Vietnam gathered momentum based on the contrasting political differences within the region, despite the fact that the cultural differences of North and South Vietnam existed only in ideology alone. With considerable and equal determination, the Vietnamese concurrently resisted foreign influence while at the same time became increasingly dependent upon foreign assistance to establish their regional dominance. The war challenged the national identity of Vietnam and provided a template for the methods of irregular warfare against a technologically superior nation which would later prove to be successful in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, and Syria. Most importantly, however, the Vietnam War proved to be a modern lesson in the resultant exodus of refugees from a regional conflict, despite the advances in technology which were hoped to reduce civilian deaths and collateral damages. Finally, the faith of the American people was eroded by the political turmoil surrounding the Vietnam War, bringing into doubt subsequent diplomatic actions which would possibly result in military action. The treatment of Vietnam veterans upon their initial return to the U.S. proved to be one of the most unfortunate episodes in national history, yet the attempts to reconcile have been slowly healing these internal wounds. The Vietnam War served as an indication of the price of modern war in terms of economic, political, and societal costs, and the conflict which spanned three decades remains one of the most significant influences of present American diplomatic and military efforts.

Notes:

[1] “Principal Wars in Which the United States Participated – U.S. Military Personnel Serving and Casualties: Vietnam Conflict – 1963-1973,” dmdc.osd.mil, n.d., accessed March 31, 2017, https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/report_principal_wars.xhtml.

[2] Tom Valentine, “How Many People Died in the Vietnam War?” thevietnamwar.info, 2014, accessed March 31, 2017, http://thevietnamwar.info/how-many-people-died-in-the-vietnam-war/.

[3] George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2002), accessed March 31, 2017, 325.

[4] Ibid., 337.

[5] Ibid., 342-343.

[6] Ibid., 344.

[7] Ibid., 346.

[8] Ibid., 366-367.